James Garner was born James Scott Bumgarner on April 7, 1928, in Norman, Oklahoma, the youngest of three sons of Weldon Warren Bumgarner and Mildred Scott (Meek).[3][4] His older brothers were Jack Garner (1926–2011) and Charles Bumgarner, a school administrator who died in 1984.[5][6] His family was Methodist.[7] His mother died when he was 5 years old.[8][9] After their mother's death, Garner and his brothers were sent to live with relatives. Garner was reunited with his family in 1934, when Weldon remarried.[10]

Garner's father remarried several times.[11] Garner came to hate one of his stepmothers, Wilma, who beat all three boys (especially him). He said that his stepmother also punished him by forcing him to wear a dress in public. When he was 14 years old, he fought with her, knocking her down and choking her to keep her from killing him in retaliation. She left the family and never returned.[12][13] His brother Jack later commented, "She was a damn no-good woman".[13] Garner's last stepmother was Grace, whom he said he loved and called "Mama Grace", and felt that she was more of a mother to him than anyone else had been.[11]

After the war, Garner joined his father in Los Angeles and enrolled at Hollywood High School, where he was voted the most popular student. A high school gym teacher recommended him for a job modelingJantzen bathing suits.[14] It paid well ($25 an hour), but in his first interview for the Archives of American Television,[15] he said he hated modeling; he soon quit and returned to Norman. He played football and basketball at Norman High School, and competed on the track and golf teams.[16] However, he dropped out in his senior year. In a 1976 Good Housekeeping magazine interview, he admitted, "I was a terrible student and I never actually graduated from high school, but I got my diploma in the Army."[9]

James Garner receives the Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster at Los Angeles in 1983.

Shortly after his father's marriage to Wilma broke up, his father moved to Los Angeles, leaving Garner and his brothers in Norman. After working at several jobs he disliked, Garner joined the United States Merchant Marine at age 16 near the end of World War II. He liked the work and his shipmates, but he suffered from chronic seasickness.[10]

Garner enlisted in the California Army National Guard, serving his first 7 months in California. He then went to Korea for 14 months, as a rifleman in the 5th Regimental Combat Team during the Korean War. He was wounded twice, first in the face and hand by shrapnel from a mortar round, and the second time in the buttocks from friendly fire from U.S. fighter jets as he dived head first into a foxhole. Garner received the Purple Heart in Korea for the first wound. He qualified for a second Purple Heart (eligibility requirement: "As the result of friendly fire while actively engaging the enemy"), but he did not actually receive it until 1983, 32 years after the event.[14][17][18][19] Garner was a self-described "scrounger" for his company in Korea.[citation needed]

In 1954, Paul Gregory, a friend whom Garner had met while attending Hollywood High School, persuaded Garner to take a nonspeaking role in the Broadway production of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, where he was able to study Henry Fonda night after night.[10] During the week of Garner's death, TCM broadcast most of his movies, introduced by Robert Osborne, who said that Fonda's gentle, sincere persona rubbed off on Garner, greatly to Garner's benefit.

Garner subsequently moved to television commercials[20] and eventually to television roles. In 1955, Garner was considered for the lead role in the Western series Cheyenne, but that role went to Clint Walker because the casting director could not reach Garner in time (according to Garner's autobiography). Garner wound up playing an Army officer in the "Cheyenne" pilot. His first film appearances were in The Girl He Left Behind and Toward the Unknown in 1956.

In 1957, he had a supporting role in the TV anthology series episode on Conflict entitled "Man from 1997," portraying Maureen (Gloria Talbott)'s brother "Red"; the show stars Jacques Sernas as Johnny Vlakos and Charlie Ruggles as elderly Mr. Boyne, a librarian from 1997, and involved a 1997 Almanac that was mistakenly left in the past by Boyne and found by Johnny in a bookstore.[21] The series' producer Roy Huggins noted in his Archive of American Television interview that he subsequently cast Garner as the lead in Maverick due to his comedic facial expressions while playing scenes in "Man from 1997" that were not originally written to be comical. He changed his last name from Bumgarner to Garner after the studio had credited him as "James Garner" without permission. He then legally changed it upon the birth of his first child, when he decided she had too many names.[15]

Garner was the lone star of Maverick for the first seven episodes, but production demands forced the studio, Warner Brothers (Warners), to create a Maverick brother, Bart, played by Jack Kelly. This allowed two production units to film different story lines and episodes simultaneously, necessary because each episode took an extra day to complete, meaning that eventually the studio would run out of finished episodes to air partway through the season unless another actor was added. The series also featured popular cross-over episodes featuring both Maverick brothers, including the famous "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres", upon which the first half of the 1973 movie The Sting appears to be based, according to Roy Huggins' Archive of American Television interview. Garner and Clint Eastwood staged an epic fistfight in an episode titled "Duel at Sundown", in which Eastwood played a vicious gunslinger. Critics were positive about the chemistry between Garner and Kelly, but Garner quit the series after the third season because of a dispute with Warners.[10]

Garner did make one fourth-season Maverick appearance, in an episode filmed in the third season but held back. The studio attempted to replace Garner's character with a Maverick cousin who had lived in Britain long enough to pick up an English accent, portrayed by Roger Moore, but Moore quit the series after filming only 14 episodes as Beau Maverick. Warners then dressed Robert Colbert, a Garner look-alike, in Bret Maverick's outfit and called the character Brent, but Brent Maverick did not have a chance to catch on with viewers since Colbert made only two episodes toward the end of the season.[citation needed] That left the rest of the series' run to Kelly, alternating with reruns of episodes with Garner. He still received billing in these newly produced Kelly episodes, aired in the 1961–62 season, although he did not appear in them and had left the series two years previously. The studio did, however, reverse the billing at the beginning of each show and in advertisements during the fifth season, billing Kelly above Garner.[citation needed]

When Charlton Heston turned down the lead role in Darby's Rangers before Garner's departure from Maverick, Garner was selected and performed well in the role. As a result of Garner's performance in Darby's Rangers, coupled with his Maverick popularity, Warners subsequently gave him lead roles in other films, such as Up Periscope and Cash McCall.[25]

In 1971, Garner returned to television in an offbeat series, Nichols. The motorcycle-riding antihero character was killed in what became the final episode of the single-season series. Garner was recast as the character's more normal twin brother, in the hopes of creating a more popular series with few cast changes.[31] According to Garner's 1999 videotaped Archive of American Television interview, not only did the network change the name of the series to James Garner as Nichols, but Garner had Nichols killed in the last episode so that a sequel could never be made.[32]

In the 1970s, Roy Huggins had an idea to remake Maverick, but this time as a modern-day private detective. Huggins worked with co-creator Stephen J. Cannell, and the pair selected Garner to attempt to rekindle the success of Maverick, eventually recycling many of the plots from the original series, according to both Huggins' and Cannell's Archive of American Television interviews. Starting with the 1974 season, Garner appeared as private investigator Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files. He appeared for six seasons, for which he received an Emmy Award for Best Actor[33] in 1977. Veteran character actor (and Wallace Beery's nephew) Noah Beery, Jr. played Rockford's father, Joseph "Rocky" Rockford. Gretchen Corbett portrayed Rockford's lawyer and sometime lover, Beth Davenport, until she had to leave the series due to a salary dispute between the producers and the studio. Garner also invited another familiar actor, Joe Santos, to play Rockford's friend in the Los Angeles Police Department, Detective Dennis Becker. Rounding out the cast was a character actor and friend of Garner's who had previously co-starred with him on Nichols,Stuart Margolin, playing Jim's ex-cell mate and treacherous "friend" Angel Martin. In the first episode of season six, "Paradise Cove", Mariette Hartley guest-starred as Court Auditor Althea Morgan.

"Tall Woman in Red Wagon" episode (1974)

Garner had previously appeared with Rockford Files co-star Hartley in a lengty series of extremely popular Polaroid Camera commercials. After six seasons, The Rockford Files was cancelled in 1980. Although low ratings were primarily to blame, the physical toll on Garner was also an issue.[34] Appearing in nearly every scene of the series, doing many of his own stunts—including one that injured his back—was wearing him out.[34] A knee injury from his National Guard days worsened in the wake of the continuous jumping and rolling, and he was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer in 1979.[34] When Garner's physician ordered him to take a break from the grind, the studio cancelled The Rockford Files.

Margolin said of his longtime colleague that despite Garner's health problems in the later years of The Rockford Files, he would often work long shifts, unusual for a starring actor, staying to do off-camera lines with other actors, doing his own stunts despite his knee problems.[34] When Garner later made The Rockford Files television movies, he said that 22 people (with the exception of series co-star Beery, who died late in 1994) came out of retirement to participate.[34]

In July 1983, Garner filed suit against Universal Studios for US$16.5 million in connection with his ongoing dispute from The Rockford Files. The suit charged Universal with "breach of contract; failure to deal in good faith and fairly; and fraud and deceit". Garner alleged that Universal was "creatively accounting", two words that are now part of the Hollywood lexicon.[35] The suit was eventually settled out of court in 1989. As part of the agreement, Garner could not disclose the amount of the settlement.[13][36]

"The industry is like it always has been. It's a bunch of greedy people," he stated in 1990.[37] Garner sued Universal again in 1998 for $2.2 million over syndication royalties. In this suit, he charged the studio with "deceiving him and suppressing information about syndication". He was supposed to receive $25,000 per episode that ran in syndication, but Universal charged him "distribution fees". He also felt that the studio did not release the show to the highest bidder for the episode reruns.[36]

Garner and Jack Kelly reappeared as Bret and Bart Maverick in a 1978 made-for-television film entitled The New Maverick, which served as the pilot for a failed series, Young Maverick, starring Charles Frank as a younger cousin named Ben Maverick. The series itself, which only featured Garner for a few moments at the beginning of the first show, was canceled so rapidly that some of the episodes filmed were never broadcast.

After the abrupt disappearance of Young Maverick two seasons earlier, an attempt to make a "Maverick" series without Garner, he returned to his earlier TV role in 1981 in the revival series Bret Maverick, but NBC unexpectedly canceled the show after only one season despite reasonably good ratings. Critics noted that most of the scripts did not measure up to the episodes starring Garner in the first series. Jack Kelly (Bart Maverick) was slated to become a series regular had the show been picked up for another season, and he appeared in the last scene of the final episode in a surprise guest appearance.

He was nominated for his only Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role in the movie Murphy's Romance opposite Sally Field. Field and director Martin Ritt had to fight the studio, Columbia Pictures, to have Garner cast, since he was regarded as a TV actor by then (despite having co-starred in the box office hit Victor Victoria opposite Julie Andrews two years earlier). Columbia did not want to make the movie, because it had no "sex or violence" in it. But because of the success of Norma Rae (1979), with the same star (Field), director, and screenplay writing team (Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch), and with Field's new production company (Fogwood Films) producing, Columbia agreed. Columbia wanted Marlon Brando to play the part of Murphy, so Field and Ritt had to insist on Garner.[39][40][41]
Part of the deal from the studio, which at that time was owned by The Coca-Cola Company, included an eight-line sequence of Field and Garner saying the word "Coke", and also having Coke signs appear prominently in the film.[42][43] In A&E's Biography of Garner, Field reported that her on-screen kiss with Garner was the best cinematic kiss she had ever experienced.[44]

Garner played Wyatt Earp in two very different movies shot 21 years apart, Hour of the Gun in 1967 and Sunset in 1988. The first film was a realistic depiction of the O.K. Corral shootout and its aftermath, while the second centered around a comedic fictional adventure shared by Earp and silent movie cowboy star Tom Mix. Earp had actually worked as a consultant for Western films during the Silent Film era toward the end of his life. The movie features Bruce Willis as Mix in only his second movie role. Although Willis was billed over Garner, the film actually gave more screen time and emphasis to Earp.[citation needed]

For the second half of the 1980s, Garner appeared in several of the North American market Mazda television commercials as an on-screen spokesman.[45]

In 1991, Garner starred in Man of the People, a television series about a con man chosen to fill an empty seat on a city council, with Kate Mulgrew and Corinne Bohrer.[46] Despite reasonably fair ratings, the show was canceled after only 10 episodes.

In 1993, Garner played the lead in a well-received HBO movie, the true story Barbarians at the Gate, and went on to reprise his role as Jim Rockford in eight The Rockford Files made-for-TV movies beginning the following year.[47] Practically everyone in the original cast of recurring characters returned for the new episodes except Noah Beery, Jr., who had died in the interim.[citation needed] According to Garner's memoir The Garner Files, he insisted upon being paid in cash before the shooting began on each of the Rockford TV-movies.

In 1994, Garner played Marshal Zane Cooper in a movie version of Maverick, with Mel Gibson as Bret Maverick (in the end it is revealed that Garner's character is the father of Gibson's Maverick) and Jodie Foster as a gambling lass with a fake Southern accent.[48]

On November 1, 2011, Simon & Schuster published Garner's autobiography The Garner Files: A Memoir. In addition to recounting his career, the memoir, co-written with nonfiction writer Jon Winokur, detailed the childhood abuses Garner suffered at the hands of his stepmother. It also offered frank, unflattering assessments of some of Garner's co-stars such as Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson. In addition to recalling the genesis of most of Garner's hit films and television shows, the book also featured a section where the star provided individual critiques for every one of his acting projects accompanied by a star rating for each. Garner's three-time co-star Julie Andrews wrote the book's foreword. Lauren Bacall, Diahann Carroll, Doris Day, Tom Selleck, and Stephen J. Cannell, and many other Garner associates, friends, and relatives provided their memories of the star in the book's coda.[55]

The "most explosive revelation" in his autobiography was that Garner smoked marijuana for much of his adult life. "I started smoking it in my late teens," Garner wrote.

I drank to get drunk but ultimately didn't like the effect. Not so with grass. It had the opposite effect from alcohol: it made me more tolerant and forgiving. I did a little bit of cocaine in the Eighties, courtesy of John Belushi, but fortunately I didn't like it. But I smoked marijuana for 50 years and I don't know where I'd be without it. It opened my mind and now it eases my arthritis. After decades of research I've concluded that marijuana should be legal and alcohol illegal.[55]

Nominated for 15 Emmy Awards during his television career, Garner received the award in 1977 as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (The Rockford Files) and in 1987 as executive producer of Promise.[56]

For his contribution to the film and television industry, Garner received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (at 6927 Hollywood Boulevard).[51]

The Garners in 1961. Greta is on Garner's lap; Kim is looking out between Garner and his wife Lois.

Garner was married to Lois Josephine Fleischman Clarke,[57][58][59][60] whom he met at a party in 1956. They married 14 days later on August 17, 1956. "We went to dinner every night for 14 nights. I was just absolutely nuts about her. I spent $77 on our honeymoon, and it about broke me."[14] According to Garner, "Marriage is like the Army; everyone complains, but you'd be surprised at the large number of people who re-enlist."[61] His wife was Jewish.[62]

When Garner and Clarke married, her daughter Kim from a previous marriage was seven years old and recovering from polio.[9] Garner had one daughter with Lois: Greta "Gigi" Garner.[9] In an interview in Good Housekeeping with Garner, his wife, and two daughters, conducted at their home, and published in March 1976, Gigi's age was given as 18 and Kim's as 27.[9]

In 1970, Garner and his wife briefly lived separately for three months. In late 1979, Garner again separated from his wife (around the time The Rockford Files stopped filming), splitting his time between living in Canada and "a rented house in the Valley".[63][64] The two continued living together in September 1981, and remained married for the rest of his life. Garner claims that the separations were not caused by marital problems, instead stating that he simply needed to spend time alone in order to recover from the stress of acting.[65] Garner died less than a month before their 58th wedding anniversary.

Garner's knees became a chronic problem during the filming of The Rockford Files in the 1970s, with "six or seven knee operations during that time". In 2000, he underwent knee replacement surgery for both of them.[14]

Garner was an owner of the "American International Racers" (AIR) auto racing team from 1967 through 1969.[69] Motorsports writer William Edgar and Hollywood director Andy Sidaris teamed with Garner for the racing documentary The Racing Scene, filmed in 1969 and released in 1970.[70] The team fielded cars at Le Mans, Daytona, and Sebring endurance races, but is best known for Garner's celebrity status raising publicity in early off-road motor-sports events.[69] In 1978, he was one of the inaugural inductees in the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame.[69]

Garner was an avid golfer for many years. Along with his brother, Jack, he played golf in high school.[16] Jack even attempted a professional golfing career after a brief stint in the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball farm system.[74] Garner took it up again in the late 1950s to see if he could beat Jack.[14] He was a regular for years at Pebble Beach Pro-Am.[74] In February 1990 at the AT&T Golf Tournament, he won the Most Valuable Amateur Trophy.[8] Garner appeared on Sam Snead's Celebrity Golf TV series which aired from 1960 – 1963. These matches were 9-hole charity events pitting Snead against Hollywood celebrities.[citation needed]

Garner was noted as an enthusiastic fan of the Raiders in the NFL, particularly when they played in Los Angeles between 1982 and 1994, when he regularly attended games and mixed with the players.[75] He was also present when the Raiders won Super Bowl XVIII over the Washington Redskins in January 1984 at Tampa, Florida.

Garner was a supporter of the University of Oklahoma, often returning to Norman for school functions. When he attended Oklahoma Sooners football games, he frequently could be seen on the sidelines or in the press box. Garner received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree at OU in 1995.[76]

In 2003, to endow the James Garner Chair in the School of Drama, he donated $500,000, half of a pledged $1 million, for the first endowed position at the drama school.[76][77] Tom H. Orr, the Director for the School of Drama (Acting/Camera Acting) and the Artistic Director of the University Theatre, currently holds the James Garner Chair at the university.[78]

For his role in the 1985 CBS miniseries Space, the character's party affiliation was changed from Republican as in the book to reflect Garner's personal views. Garner said, "My wife would leave me if I played a Republican."[80]

A private and introverted man, according to family and friends,[83] on Saturday evening, July 19, 2014, police and rescue personnel were summoned to Garner's Los Angeles-area home, where they found the actor dead at the age of 86.[84][85][86] He had suffered a massive heart attack caused by coronary artery disease.[87] He had been in poor health since a severe stroke in 2008.[88]

Longtime friends Tom Selleck (who worked with Garner on The Rockford Files), Sally Field (who worked with Garner in Murphy's Romance) and Clint Eastwood (who guest-starred with Garner on Maverick and starred in Space Cowboys) reflected on his death. Selleck said, "Jim was a mentor to me and a friend, and I will miss him."[89] Field said, "My heart just broke. There are few people on this planet I have adored as much as Jimmy Garner. I cherish every moment I spent with him and relive them over and over in my head. He was a diamond."[90] Eastwood said, "Garner opened the door for people like Steve McQueen and myself."[91]

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(US Census records for 1900 show that Mr. Garner's maternal ancestor, Charles Meek, listed as "white", resided on the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma.)
"James Garner: A Really Nice Guy makes Good". Good Housekeeping. New York City: The Hearst Corporation. March 1976. Page: 46, photo caption: "Though Gigi Garner, 18, . . ." Page 46, JG: "I was a terrible student and I never actually graduated from high school, but I got my diploma in the Army." Page 48: "my two daughters, Kim and Gigi" Page 48: "to his darkly pretty, very bright wife, Lois" Page 48, Lois: "When I first met him, I was an emotional wreck. My seven-year-old daughter, Kim, was in a hospital with polio." Page 58: "Jim's mother, who was half Cherokee Indian, a beautiful woman who died when he was five." (The interview was conducted on the set of Rockford Files and at his home with his wife and two daughters present, who lived at home. Kim's age was given as "27").